Benge - Twenty Systems

Terrific album from Benge. An album of twenty tracks, each track created from the sonic character of a single synth from each of the years 1968-1987. A great concept and album package, a booklet is included that describes each track and constituent instrument in all its wayward idiosyncrasies.

Absolutely minimal extra processing on the raw synth materials that Benge manages to coax out of these machines means that each track speaks fully for the individual synth that birthed it. The album could be viewed in one sense as a sort of sonic museum for those of us that will probably never see these machines in real life.

While this may sound like a somewhat austere and academic project, the resultant album is alive with a uniquely human character full of veiled emotion and depth. The album feels like some abstract paean to man’s ingenuity and his ability to create. At the very heart of these machine songs; one can see the hand of countless tinkerers, engineers, and musicians that worked to create complex musical instruments from a collection of diodes, transistors, and wires.

Highly recommended.